On Monday, 25th of April we did meet at my flat to review the workshop in Bavaria with Master Chen. Among my students in Berlin there were 4 attending the workshop in Freising nearby Munich, three of them came to this meeting yesterday. But there were some more and one friend of mine, a Taijiquan-Practitioner who got curious about “Practical Method”.
For everybody it was very useful to review parts of the workshop on video and to listen to Josef’s teachings again in order to discuss several aspects afterwards.
We did talk about many things in theory, but mostly we did try to turn these things into practice right away. There was for instance:
– matching exercise
– feeling straight line of opponents strike (feeling static power as an exercise), then let go and “add a little bit”
– 11:59 or “manipulating the clock”
– separation of body parts
Matching exercise
On the workshop, Josef did teach a drill to practice the ability “to match”. Therefore we should avoid to fight back, only take the incoming power and try to match it. From there on we can start to improve our sensitivity, and this should lead us to the ability to “entice energy out” … as far as I did understand that …
This he did demonstrate on Hendrik in application very clearly. Not to lean forward, not backward, keeping the own center. Then there was this little, to me nearly invisible difference in his move and Hendrik was hit very strongly.
Josef mentioned: big moves locking energy, small moves brings energy out.
But of course there were lots of more things going on at the workshop.
For our group in Berlin and for me it was very interesting to find more and more connections between philosophy and the practice of Taijiquan.
“Manipulating the clock”
One of the topics we did talk a lot afterwards was the “manipulation of the clock”.
To my understanding this is the same topic Master Chen did call “breaking the seal”, when he did talk about it on Daqingshan.
The picture he did use when he taught this in our private training in Freising was this:
In usual live, we always go to 11:59 (on the clock), then we use to fall back. Every day, until we got too tired, then we stop.
But with practice we can learn to manipulate the clock, so with the same motion we can go beyond the threshold of 12 o’clock. Being able to achieve this we will automatically move to the next threshold (through momentum), from 12 to 3, 3 to 6, 6 to 9 and 9 to 12 again on the clock.
Then the probably most important question did arise: Sascha did ask: O.k., but what does this mean in reality/ in practice/ in application ?
From my understanding I did answer, that in Taijiquan we should manipulate distance and angles. This is what I observed in Josefs practical examples: through separation of upper and lower body he did change the situation in a way that the opponent did loose support and is falling down
Personal corrections
For myself I got lots of very good corrections from Josef in private training, main points for me are now:
1. to bring the front kwa in front of the shoulder and sink the rear kwa down
This also was a issue on the workshop at the beginning. Mostly we were taught by other teachers before to put the shoulder right above the kwa and that this should not chance. But in application taught by Josef it very often was necessary to bring the front kwa in front of the shoulder in order to move the bottom to the front.
Now I try to get this feeling more in my Yilu.
2. not to rotate the hand more than the shoulder, trying to match the shoulder-rotation with the rotation of the hand
3. to separate all bodyparts close to each other
4. stretching out all extremities more
5. adding power to the form without loosing looseness
Of course there is much more to mention, that’s only what came to my mind so far.
All together the 11 days with Master Chen Zhonghua here in Europe were very beneficial and very enjoyable. It’s a pure pleasure to learn from his teachings.
Thank you very much !
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Thanks for the post, Master Chen told me the same thing in relation with the kua
“1. to bring the front kwa in front of the shoulder and sink the rear kwa down”
If someone push me on my front arm, keeping the front kua higher than the rear kua will redirect the push to the rear foot.
This is why going to workshop is important since we don’t see him doing this. Master Chen already internalized this setup thus we can’t see it from outside. While we students should start by exaggerating this setup while learning to redirect opponent energy.